Tag Archives:
fracking

Travelling back to London on an overcast Wednesday afternoon (in the booked seat of a train company that shall remain nameless), the air conditioning broke and a small but steady stream of water leaked from the ceiling into my lap. The same thing happened to other people up and down the length of the carriage: dripping on scalps, trickling down backs and, in one unfortunate case, pouring straight onto a hapless worker’s laptop. The incident led to much British tutting and rolling of eyes. Complaints to the guard were followed by conversations with neighbours, the sharing of napkins and even a few jokes. This annoying shared experience led to a sense of unity amongst my previously silent fellow travellers.

This post is by Tony Bosworth, Friends of the Earth’s energy campaigner.

It’s no surprise that a task force funded by the shale gas industry has produced a report saying fracking can help tackle climate change. But its arguments – repeated in the blog here this week by Stephen Tindale, an advisor to the task force – doesn’t present the whole picture and glosses over some vital issues. Read more

Heathrow was the elephant in the room at Tuesday’s Infrastructure Commission launch by Labour in Westminster. Most people there heard the shadow chancellor’s commitment to take early decisions on infrastructure as an indication that he’d approve a third runway if Labour gets back into power. Read more

This post is by Dr Bruce Tofield, associate consultant at the Adapt Low Carbon Group, University of East Anglia.

In launching Next steps for shale production, energy minister Michael Fallon said that fracking “is an exciting prospect, which could bring growth, jobs and security”. There is, however, great concern about the damaging local environmental impact of fracking in Britain. Less remarked upon is fossil fuel lock-in, highlighted recently by Rachel Cary. As Michael Liebreich, CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, has pointed out “If the UK ever becomes dependent on shale gas, it will never be able to kick the fracking habit.” Read more

Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass contains a famous passage describing Alice’s attempts to run alongside the Red Queen in a topsy-turvy nonsense world, where cause and effect are reversed: Read more

Fracking has brought environmental activism out onto the streets of the home counties, with a protest movement unprecedented since the days of Swampy. The concerns of residents living near proposed drilling sites are many, but particularly include the potential for water contamination. Should people be worried about this pollution? Read more

Any new technology has a short honeymoon period where its attractions loom large before practicalities intervene to burst the bubble and a more realistic picture of its costs and benefits emerges. I should know, I helped to raise expectations about the future of UK wave power in the early 2000s. Our hope that large wave farms would be up and running within the decade proved distinctly optimistic. Read more

Among the many extravagant claims made by supporters of fracking, perhaps the most absurd is that it will lead to a renaissance in British manufacturing. George Osborne picked up this theme last week when he argued that cheap energy was leading manufacturers to return to the US and he wanted to see this happen in Britain. Read more

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The views of external contributors are not necessarily those of Green Alliance.